There may be electrical blackouts in our immediate future as the sun has launched two healthy geomagnetic storms toward Earth capable of taking out vulnerable transformers and shutting down wide swaths of the world wide electric grid.
A pair of scorching explosions on the Sun’s surface is sparking the biggest radiation and geomagnetic storm the Earth has experienced in five years, space weather experts said Wednesday.
The storm, expected to hit Earth early Thursday US time and last through Friday, may disrupt power grids, GPS systems and satellites, and has already forced some airlines to change their routes around the polar regions.
In addition to possibly garbling some of Earthlings’ most prized gadgets, the event will likely give nighttime viewers in parts of Central Asia a prime look at the aurora borealis, or northern lights, on Thursday night.
“Space weather has gotten very interesting over the past 24 hours,” said Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The fuss began late Sunday at an active region on the Sun known as 1429, with a big solar flare that was associated with a burst of solar wind and plasma known as a coronal mass ejection that hurtled in Earth’s direction at some four million miles per hour (6.4 million kilometers per hour).
Another solar flare and CME followed at 0024 GMT on March 7, setting off a strong geomagnetic and solar radiation storm, both at level three on a five-step scale.
NASA said the second flare — classified in the potent X class — was one of the largest of this cycle known as the solar minimum which began in early 2007, and fell in just behind a slightly stronger one which erupted in August.
“The current increase in the number of X-class flares is part of the Sun’s normal 11-year solar cycle, during which activity on the Sun ramps up to solar maximum, which is expected to peak in late 2013,” the US space agency said.
The solar flares alone caused brief high frequency radio blackouts that have now passed, according to NOAA.
One of the biggest worries with a massive extended blackouts is maintaining cooling systems at nuclear reactors. The US has 104 active reactors with only 8 hours or less of backup power to run cooling systems.
